Well as long as I'm taking victory laps (very modest, humble, self-effacing victory laps, mind you) let me point out the following. Now even our old pal and world's greatest investigative reporter Brad Stone of the New York Times wakes up and weighs in on the fact that there's a tech bubble. Money quote from his story on Page One of today's Times: "Internet companies with funny names, little revenue and few customers are commanding high prices. And investors, having seemingly forgotten the pain of the first dot-com bust, are displaying symptoms of the disorder known as irrational exuberance." Money quote two: "Internet start-ups are drawing investment based on their ability to build an audience, not bring in revenue — the very alchemy that many say led to the inflation and bursting of the dot-com bubble."
Companies mentioned: Facebook, Google, Right Media, Skype, YouTube, Twitter, Jaiku, Geni.com, Ning.
Great to see Brad staying ahead of the competition. Why, he's only eight days behind the Wall Street Journal, which on Oct. 9 ran its own story about Bubble 2.0 and included the hilarious quotes from Marc Andreessen saying there is no bubble, and there can't be a bubble until everyone stops saying there is a bubble. In the world of the New York Times business section any story that appears within a month after it first appears in the Wall Street Journal is considered a scoop. Prize is you get an audience with Floyd Norris at the restaurant of his choice, where he'll talk for two hours straight and splatter his wisdom all over you; and you get to go a whole day without Gretchen Morgenstern screaming at you on the phone and telling you how much you suck.
Now I know what you're wondering. Haven't you read about Bubble 2.0 somewhere else? Could it be that all these newspapers are just getting their story ideas from a certain fake CEO blogger who has been reporting on Bubble 2.0 in stories like this one and this one and this one and this one and ... well you get the idea.
Keep stealing my ideas, you filthy hacks. We'll hit you up for patent royalties down the road.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Bubble? Really? Where'd you get that idea?
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17 comments:
Never, EVER mention Brad Stone by his full name here ever again!
You may use his fitting initials: BS.
When's he coming to Noo York? My friends Vito and Lenny the Squid are eager to give him the full tour. Nudge nudge, wink wink.
Gretchen. Great name for a daschund.
Funny how the only ones claiming there's no bubble are those who either have a vested interest in the current one and/or those who benefited from the first one purely through an intersection of random events.
I cannot wait for the moment Zuckface crashes and burns.
I know it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway ... you are a f**king genius!
well that settles it then, next time some kid tries to sell me a subscription I am going with Forbes. WSJ & NYT can keep their "news" to themselves. Good work DL, I mean, FSJ.
WTF????
"Could it be that all these newspapers are just getting their story ideas from a certain fake CEO blogger who has been reporting on Bubble 2.0 in stories like this one and this one and this one and this one and ... well you get the idea."
.... fake??
Fake Steve,
Forget the bubble chatter. Its stuff created by hack journalists now that they have finally noticed the tech world hasn't died ... they're wrapping their crappy reporting in whipped cream to disguise the bad job they have done. All while trying to serve up a tasty morsel.
In the dog days on summer you had a blog speculating that a mega, ill-conceived tech acquisition to sink two struggling companies was looming. Haven't seen it yet. Larry's attempted buy of BEAS doesn't qualify -- ORCL can slowly suck the life energy out of them. Its too small to dent ORCL.
Where, oh where, is the colossal blunder you were speculating about.
Reno beat me to it -- pure genius FSJ.
9:56 anon
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Wouldn't it be funny if you were some washed-up lowlife who is stuck in a dead-end job wishing a kid half his age to crash and burn?
Fook off.
"Keep stealing my ideas, you filthy hacks. We'll hit you up for patent royalties down the road."
Actually, that would be copywrite law, not patent law, Jobso.
....evil fake ballmer's attorney.....
It may be a bubble in that people are overpaying for what they're buying, but it's NOT a bubble like the last time. If Rupert and the eBay lady and so on want to pay more than some website is worth, THEY lose money. You don't have gajillions of little investors losing tons of money on groceries on the internet or idiotic things that have no possible business model. I think Google's stock is probably too high, too, but they're going to be around for many years to come, so you might be as glad you have google stock as the original Xerox investors were. Slight overvalue? Yes. Bubble? You mean, like a two-bedroom in Watts going for a million? Nope.
FSJ,
Damn, you are supporting a whole ecosystem from your rear end.
First you nourished beastmaster and his ilk for the last 25 years, now your are feeding our most 'distinguished' journalists as well.
Talk about sucking out of your ass, it's more like a deluge. You've been overdoing those high colonics for sure.
Vegan Vegan
(systems biologist)
Steve, you've just been brad stoned, again!
and Mike, tell Lenny I said hi. He'll know who I am, we worked together down in SoHo, summer of 98.
Past performance is no indicator of future results, performance, returns, whatever you like. It just isn't. There is no bubble. There is a public that has realized what it wants and is getting it.
Bubble 2.0 (a Halloween poem)
---
Bubble bubble toil and trouble
Facebook valuation doubles
Watch with fright the Web 2 - 0
By Halloween it may well BLOW!
The companies without the vowels
may loosen tech investors bowels
the profitless make VCs thirst
they'll cut and run while bubbles BURST!
Well, eyeballs are worth something to advertisers for a change this cycle - unless Google's income statements are wholly wrong - but I think the SEC would have words about that (see Software Publisher's Take 2 re-re-revised income statement for more details). I think it's more East Coast writers and tech companies being pissed that the West Coast is getting all the headlines again.
To the point that companies like Take 2 would fudge their numbers beyond all recognition. Oh did I mention they're a NYC company?
I think you'd need to see Wall Street going nuts again for any real brow sweat to be valid. Everyone around me wants to sell their API's to Google, Yahoo and eBay.
Difference. But please - call it a Bubble all you want. The fewer companies getting in on the action makes it all the better for the rest of us. Anti-hype your brains out!
welcome to the bubble-pop-v.2.0 party, brad stone — now please politely STFU! you heartless killjoy filthy hack of the decade, maybe the century.
{anyway, fsj — shhhh!!! you're gonna ruin it for me! i got all sorts of dumb-ass VCs and NASDAQ companies hot to bid and dump bill-yuunz on my latest, new, unproven, social networking Web 2.0 site. why should you be the only one worth $6 B. around here?? quit jinxing it! i got my gulfstream all picked out...}
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